


Misunderstandings

by dovingbird



Series: One Simple Change [7]
Category: American Idol RPF
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-25
Updated: 2014-01-25
Packaged: 2018-01-09 22:22:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,884
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1151502
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dovingbird/pseuds/dovingbird
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It happened when he was making ramen noodles. Sure, he was Phil Phillips. He was on the cusp of success. He could have a $50,000 recording contract in his hands in, what, a couple of weeks? Maybe that meant he could afford more than ramen. But that didn't mean his tastes had changed. If he couldn't have Dad's ribs and Mom's baked beans, then he'd settle for his own ramen. Part of my "One Simple Change" series, where each story was written week-to-week as the S11 episodes premiered. AU in that Hannah and Phil broke up. Most likely will not be continued.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Misunderstandings

It happened when he was making ramen noodles. Sure, he was Phil Phillips. He was on the cusp of success. He could have a $50,000 recording contract in his hands in, what, a couple of weeks? Maybe that meant he could afford more than ramen. But that didn't mean his tastes had changed. If he couldn't have Dad's ribs and Mom's baked beans, then he'd settle for his own ramen.  
  
He was stirring it, two minutes and twenty-seven seconds to go, when he heard the mansion front door open.  
  
"Jess?" he called, not bothering to glance over his shoulder. He was finicky about how his water boiled. "I'm makin' noodles. You want some?" He got sucked into his overly precise stirring for a few long moments before he realized he hadn't gotten a response back.  
  
Hands suddenly blocked his vision, and he stood stock-still. An ambush?! "...now, Jess, I know you ain't tall enough to do that..." He touched the wrists and felt one very familiar wristwatch. His heart leaped into his throat. By the time he spun around, shoving the arms out of the way, he knew exactly who he'd see. "Heejun?!"  
  
"Heeeeeeeeey!"  
  
The bearhug couldn't come fast enough. He held his brother so tightly that he wouldn't be surprised if he cut off his circulation. "What are you doin' here, man?! You're not supposed to be here for, what, another hour?"  
  
"Dude, I've got, like, Asian time-traveling magics or whatever!"  
  
"What he means," Colton's familiar voice came around the corner, "is no flight delays whatsoever."  
  
"Dude!" Colton's bearhug came next. "Aren't ya'll a sight for sore eyes?"  
  
"I know, right?" Colton's arms were vices around his back. God, he couldn't believe how much he'd missed these guys. The sheer force of emotion was enough to suffocate him.  
  
No matter how much he'd dreamed about it, though, there was nothing that could prepare him for the next voice he heard. "Your, uh, noodles are boiling over."  
  
Phil locked eyes with Elise across the kitchen and his heart melted. It was like Colton and Heejun parted, a Red Sea, to leave him with a perfectly unobstructed view of the setting sun on her hair and the richness of her tan. He knew he was grinning like an idiot. Didn't need nobody to tell him. "Elise..."  
  
"No, seriously, they're boiling over!"  
  
The timer rang out loudly and Heejun screamed like a little girl and Colton nearly grabbed the pot without a potholder and there was pandemonium everywhere and Phil could NOT stop laughing. By the time the situation was under control they were all cackling so hard, they thought they were gonna burst.  
  
"Damn," Phil finally managed. "I missed ya'll."  
  
Elise grinned at him, eyes twinkling. "I think we can say the same about you."  
  
His melted heart regained shape and shoved itself right into his throat. Suddenly all the stress, all the worry, it was all gone. She had that way about her. She could take it all away with just one look, just one kiss...  
  
Phil strode forward, gently took her face in his hands, and captured her lips with his own.  
  
There.  
  
It was all gone now.  
  
When he broke the kiss, the room was almost eerily silent, and Phil wondered at it for a long moment before it occurred to him that this was the first kiss that anyone else had ever witnessed from them. It wasn't some dream anymore. It was...real.  
  
Elise stared at him in shock. And then it melted into a degree of wonder. How long had she waited for that?  
  
She grabbed his hand and gave it a tight squeeze, but the sparkle in her eyes remained. “Hey…so, umm…“ The stammering made him smile. Every time he saw the way he could affect her it made his chest puff out a little further. “Erika and I, we’re gonna go…hang out by the pool and catch up and stuff.” She laughed. “We’ve got…a LOT to talk about.”  
  
Phil nodded. He could almost feel Colton’s curious eyes burning into his back. There was so much to say. So little time to do it in. When it came right down to it, these guys were his brothers, and one of them was still completely out of the loop about him and Elise. It was time. No, it was BEYOND time. But his fingers tightened around her own. When he finally had her this close again, close enough to touch, to SMELL, he was almost terrified to let her go.  
  
She blinked down at their hands before meeting his eyes with a radiant smile. “You go spend time with your bros,” she quietly teased, lifting her eyebrows, “and I’ll hang with my girl…’cuz, look, when it’s all over, you know where I’m gonna be tonight, right?”  
  
His mind raced at the possibilities. “I can’t wait,” he whispered back.  
  
Elise favored him with one more grin before she looked over his shoulder. “Take care of him, boys.” And then she was walking away.  
  
Phil stood there, watching her, memorizing her, drinking her in, and gave a happy sigh.  
  
“…so where’s my kiss?”  
  
“Oh, fuck you, Heejun,” Phil called with a laugh. “Help me clean this up.”  
  
“And then I’ll get my reward?” he chirped.  
  
“You’re lucky you’re handy to keep around,” Phil mouthed back.  
  
The trio didn’t waste time. As they scooped up warm water and sad, limp noodles, the silence stretched between them. But Heejun, Phil thought, had never met a silence he didn’t like to change. “So. You and Elise, huh?”  
  
Phil tried to shrug like it was no big deal, like he hadn’t been hiding a lover from Heejun and the rest of the world for some time now, but he smiled despite himself. “Yeah. How ‘bout that?”  
  
“I mean, I knew you and Hannah were splitskies,” he said as he carefully lifted a handful of noodles into the garbage disposal, “but that was it. Wow.” He absently shoved his glasses up his nose, considering Phil with a frank expression. “For someone as ugly as you, you did all right. She’s a babe.”  
  
“Shut up.” Phil chuckled. “And eyes off the girl.”  
  
“So are you officially together now?” Colton had been so quiet that Phil had almost forgotten he was there. He met his eyes. “Like, boyfriend-girlfriend?”  
  
Phil stared at Colton, feeling his eyes turn sharp. “…no.”  
  
Colton hummed softly as he nodded and sponged up the water. “Oh.” He was quiet after that. Phil could almost see the wheels in his head turning. “Okay.”  
  
“Spit it out, Dixon.” He felt his effervescent happiness begin to fade, as if something thicker and heavier was replacing it. “You’ve got something you want to say. I can see it. And I wanna hear it.”  
  
This time, Colton kept his eyes on the stove. He scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed until it was cleaner than it had ever been in its life, and it gave Phil time to pull on his armor, to lace each piece with thoughtful care. And then Colton inhaled. “Don’t you think she deserves a little commitment if you’re sleeping with her?”  
  
In that moment, Colton’s words stabbed into the one part of him that wasn’t armored: his temper. “Excuse me?”  
  
“Dude, lay off.” Heejun’s hackles were up in a second, and for a moment Phil felt he could see into Heejun’s mind. For as long as his brother here was on the show, it had always been Phil and Heejun, Heejun and Phil. Colton was new territory, and Heejun didn’t quite know how to approach him yet. From the way that Colton was staring at the Asian, it was clear he didn’t really know how to talk to him either. “Not everybody’s gonna fit in some nice little formula like that.”  
  
Colton’s eyebrows lowered as he frowned. “I know that. I’m just thinking…”  
  
“…thinking what?” Phil pressed.  
  
Colton stiffened. “That Elise deserves better than to be treated like that.”  
  
Phil dropped the pot in the sink with a resounding clang and gritted his teeth. “How am I treating her?”  
  
“I don’t-”  
  
“Am I treating her like a whore? Is that what you’re saying?”  
  
“Phil-”  
  
“Are you just gonna sit there and force your little moral code on me until I fit in your damn system of-”  
  
“Phil!” Colton lunged and grabbed fistfuls of Phil’s shirt, giving him whiplash from how he yanked him closer. “Will you chill out for just two seconds and listen to me?!”  
  
Phil squeezed Colton’s wrists tightly and wondered at the sudden urge to deck him across the face. Even Heejun was staring at Phil oddly. Jesus. He needed to sit down. He jerked himself free from Colton’s grip and perched on a barstool, inhaling sharply.  
  
Colton hovered for several seconds, never once breaking eye contact, before he leaned against the kitchen island. “…you were with Hannah for over three years. That by itself tells me you’re not scared of commitment. So I’m just…trying to figure out why you’re not giving it to Elise.”  
  
“Sometimes commitment doesn’t need a title,” he murmured.  
  
“I know,” Colton said just as softly. “But this one does.”  
  
Phil’s wandering eyes flashed to meet Colton’s again. “What do you mean?”  
  
Colton looked pained. “Elise…has been burned in the past. Burned bad.”  
  
“How do you know? What’s she told you?”  
  
“She doesn’t have to tell me anything. I can just see it on her face when she’s with you.” As Phil relaxed, Colton visibly did the same. “Have you even…” He trailed off into silence, and he bit his bottom lip and thought before he began again. “Have her past relationships…ever come up?”  
  
Phil considered this. For as long as he could remember, they had two different relationships: inside the bedroom and outside. Outside was soft, teasing, but all about him. She soothed him and calmed his worries. She kept herself locked down. She kept herself hidden. The sex, meanwhile, was lively, passionate, almost a struggle. It pitted a dominant temper against a bubbly effervescence, but the afterglow was silent, full of skin-to-skin contact as they rested flush against each other. It was as if Elise was waiting for something, waiting for…  
  
Unease stirred quiet and poisonous in his stomach. As he looked up at Colton, he knew the answer was written on his face.  
  
Colton pressed his lips into a thin line, but stayed quiet. He merely tilted his head to the side and waited.  
  
Phil sighed. When he raked his fingers through his hair, the pain was a welcome penance. “She’s been my lover for almost two months,” he said hoarsely. “And I don’t even know her middle name.”  
  
“Two months?!” Heejun’s voice suddenly reminded Phil that he was still in the room. “Geez! When did it start? And why didn’t I know?”  
  
He flinched and looked away with a shrug. “The night Hannah broke up with me.” Phil looked back just in time to see Heejun’s eyes widen, and he could almost read the silent judgment within. “It wasn’t her who did it, man, it was…it was BOTH of us.”  
  
Wasn’t that the truth. To this day, he still wasn’t sure who instigated that first fateful kiss. It seemed to him that Elise had leaned in, yes, but Phil was the one who had turned his head to meet her lips straight on, wasn’t he?  
  
There were a long few moments where no one said a word before Phil looked up again. Colton was watching Heejun, Heejun was staring at the wall, and Phil was left feeling like he’d just wandered onto the set of some weird soap opera he’d never bargained for. Colton suddenly straightened up. “Well. I’m gonna go say hey to Hollie and Skylar. But hey.” He veered toward Phil and pulled him into a hug. “I love you, man, all right? I’ll see you later.”  
  
“Yeah.” Phil wanted to smile in reassurance as Colton left, he really did, but something was wrong. He couldn’t shake that feeling. His eyes drifted straight back to Heejun. “…talk to me, buddy.”  
  
Heejun kept his mouth shut. The clock ticked by, and all he did was fiddle with his keys.  
  
“Heejun, please.”  
  
He sighed. “What else don’t I know?”  
  
Phil winced. “I mean…”  
  
“I knew about you and Hannah, but that’s it, man. That’s all. What else am I missing? And why the hell am I missing it when Colton knows every little freaking thing about your relationship?”  
  
Phil shut his eyes. He deserved this, he knew that, but damn, it hurt. “Jesus. All right.” There was so much to say. So much had changed. “…Elise and I hooked up a little while after you got eliminated. About a week. But that was it. That was all it was supposed to be. I still wanted to get back with Hannah. Elise was waiting for my lead. It was a mess.” He paused. “And I was a real son of a bitch.”  
  
“No surprise there.” Heejun’s voice was just sullen enough to keep Phil from punching him playfully in the arm. Instead, he pressed on.  
  
“I don’t think either of us thought it was gonna drag on like this, but I’ll be damned if I couldn’t keep my mind off her. And it sucked. She just wanted to help me, to make me feel better, whatever, and I just…I used her.”  
  
His eyes flickered with recognition. “’Somebody I Used to Know.’”  
  
“Yeah.” Phil stared at the wall. He could still see the sparkles on her skirt, the shine on her lips, the regret in her eyes. “That’s…when it became a real thing, I think. That’s when I knew I couldn’t let her go.”  
  
“And Colton?”  
  
Phil looked down, curling his hands into fists. “Colton…didn’t like how it was going. He pulled me aside, told me that maybe I needed to break it off. And I listened. Or…I guess I TRIED to listen, at least. But it was a lost cause. And since he got eliminated right when I decided to say ‘Fuck it’ and be with her again…he, uh, didn’t know about it until today, and…yeah.” He rubbed his eyes. “I think that’s it.”  
  
Heejun removed his glasses and squeezed the pinched area on the bridge of his nose. “How do you know you’re not just still using her?”  
  
The tension snapped and bled red into his eyes. “C’mon, man, I don’t need two Coltons on my case right now,” he muttered as he shoved away from the island.  
  
“Dude, what’s with you? You were never like this before.”  
  
“Well, maybe I am now.”  
  
“Maybe that’s bullshit!”  
  
Phil and Heejun whirled around to see Skylar and Hollie standing in the door, Hollie looking hesitant and Skylar looking mad enough to spit. “The hell?” Phil asked.  
  
Skylar jabbed her finger behind her. “Far as I can tell, there’s a super-sweet, super-pretty, super-AWESOME girl sittin’ out there chatting you up to her best friend like there’s no tomorrow, and you’re in here snortin’ like a bull and ripping your OWN best friend to pieces. And there’s something real wrong with that picture.”  
  
“Skylar…” Hollie murmured, eyes widening, but the brunette didn’t let up.  
  
“You’ve got yourself a right fine lady out there, so instead of pretending it’s some big fat dangerous secret, why don’t you just pull on your big boy britches and stop with the stupid attitude and make somethin’ real happen?!”  
  
For the first time in weeks, Phil was floored. What the hell was he supposed to say? If it was Colton or Heejun, he would’ve blasted them with words. Elise might get a scowl. But Skylar Laine? Jesus, she was scary when she was mad.  
  
Phil slowly lifted his hands into the air. “I’ll think about it?” he chanced.  
  
“You’d better!” And after she snagged a pint of Ben and Jerry’s from the freezer, she dragged Hollie back down the hall.  
  
The boys stared after her. “…y’know, I’m surprised you got out of that without any bruises,” Heejun said.  
  
“You’re telling me.”  
  
There was hesitance. And then Heejun stood straight again. “All right. I’ve gotta…unpack or something.”  
  
“Heejun?”  
  
“I know, man.” He waved Phil off. “I know. But I’ve gotta get away for a second, or I’m gonna get mad at you, and I don’t wanna be mad at you. It’d be stupid. We‘re gonna share a room again until this is over. And on tour.”  
  
Phil felt his earlier temper breaking into pieces that scattered at his feet. “…yeah.” He slumped against the island again. “…Heejun? I’m sorry I fucked all this up.”  
  
“Don’t worry about it. We’re cool. We’re gonna be cool. We‘re gonna be so cool that the whole mansion freezes.”  
  
That was probably the best he could hope for. He forced a smile. “All right. I’ll see you later.”  
  
“Yeah.” Heejun ruffled his hair as he went by, his lips quirking into a goofy grin as well. “Go get your girl.”  
  
His girl.  
  
His GIRL.  
  
Could she really be his? If he shut down his pride and sucked up his attitude and actually tried to make this happen…could he really make this happen?  
  
He exhaled.  
  
He had a lot of work to do tonight.


End file.
